In his landscape drawings from the early 1650s, Rembrandt strove to create generalized views of the buildings in their settings, enlived by wonderfully atmospheric penwork, as seen here in the foliage of the trees. Rembrandt situated the cottage parallel to the picture plane and framed it symmetrically by adding a strip of paper to the right of the original sheet, on which he rounded off the tree branches, fence, and horizon. By doing so, he gave the composition a beautiful and imposing equilibrium of almost classical dimension.

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Inscription: [in pen and brown ink at lower left]: WE [monogram of William Esdaile] (Lugt 2617)

Marking: Stamped lower left with the collector's mark of Sir Thomas Lawrence (Lugt 2445). Verso: on the former backing stamped with the collectors' marks of Sir Francis Seymour Haden (Lugt 1227) and John Heywood Hawkins (Lugt 1472).

Helen Bobritzky Mules "Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 42, no. 4, New York, 1985, pp. 30, 31.